It's good to branch outside your comfort zone every now and again to try something you might not have done in the past. I'd like to think that more often than not, I do try new things. Whether it's a new activity I don't normally do, trying foods I've never had before, or even a new photography technique out. Recently I've been messing around with Photomanips, trying out a genre of "photography" (heh, sorry), that I've never been too terribly fond of, to varying results. Some of the things I tried just reinforced my beliefs, but then others honestly surprised me and I found a sort of "happy medium" if you will where I started to pull in techniques I learned with those and applied them to my other photos.

Never would have known that it was tin foil huh?

I'm glad I broke out and tried the most unlikely form of photography, which I thought wouldn't agree with me, 'cause I learned some really interesting things from that experience. For example, my lovely girlfriend asked me to try to make a "creative" photo with some loose leaf tea for her health and beauty blog, so my mind started racing. I tried a bunch of unconventional things to try to emulate a similar image to the one in my head. After a bunch of running back and forth to the kitchen, I finally had my tools. The most unlikely culprit being a sheet of aluminum foil to use as the background. Yep, aluminum foil. I poured steaming hot tea into a translucent tea cup and piled on the loose leaf tea into a smaller translucent food dish and lit a candle behind them. The results where pretty interesting and out came a photo that got me excited.

All in All, the take away here is to free your hesitation and experiment with something you haven't fooled around with. You may just be surprised to find your new favorite meal, place to visit, hobby, or even photo technique. Enjoy Life. Sadly we only occupy a finite timeline, why waste it?